Wolf at Beaver Creek

for Allison Hedge-Coke

This gray shape before me

not any known thing.

From twenty feet, my eyes slide

into other eyes, full

of wild streaks of darkening sky.

The creek rushes in its small calling.

He moves first, turns from the trail,

trots off, turns, stares,

trots, stops, stares

three more times before the willows

swallow him. I am rooted under clouds

ripping in winds too high to hear,

that other eye heaving in the heart.

From Cartography of Water, NorthShore Press, © 2007